Hurts So Good

State Senator Don East (R, Dist. 30) died recently while campaigning for reelection to the state senate. (Sen. East once upon a time represented Watauga County, too, but not for many years.) It was too late to remove his name from the ballot. Under NC law the 30th Dist. Republican Executive Comm. had to name a replacement candidate. They chose NC State House member Shirley Randleman.

Though Randleman is an incumbent member of the NC House (since 2008), she's not running for reelection even though she's obviously a political philosopher of consequence: "I’m pro-God, pro-life and pro-gun,” she said. Great answer if you're auditioning for the Jerry Springer Show, but kinda too on-the-nose for our contemporary Clown Car in Raleigh.

Why isn't Randleman running for reelection to the NC House? In January 2012, she announced she would step aside. She told the Wilkes Journal-Patriot:

"Last year ... I was on the road for 46 of 52 weeks. Thirty-seven of those weeks were spent in Raleigh. I was somewhere else in North Carolina where my service was required during the other weeks, helping with redistricting or working for one of the committees on which I serve. When you add all of that up, it's a lot of time."

That's quite the pick to replace Sen. East, guys. If  the deceased "Sen. East" beats his Democratic opponent today, Ms. Randleman will have even more to complain about.

The Good Guys Win One

Well, partly anyway. Republican Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown has backed off his proposed legislation to override local ordinances and allow digital billboards every 1,500 feet on major state highways. He's dropped that entirely, but is keeping language in the bill which will allow the billboard industry greater latitude in cutting trees to allow a passing motorist, or a visitor from outer space, more time to read the small print.

The NC Senate Transportation Committee endorsed the new language yesterday, but not without some spectacular whining from Republican Sen. Don East, whose district used to include Watauga:

...East, R-Surry, complained that vegetation had obscured advertising he'd purchased some years ago on a billboard near Boone, within three or four weeks of its having gone up.

East said he responded by asking the billboard's owner for a partial refund. "I wasn't getting what I paid for there," he said.

The only remedy for such injustice, evidently, is a new state-wide law on clear-cutting the roadside.

Chew That Bone!

Strong editorial in the Gaston Gazette blasting state Sen. Don East (R-Surry) and other Republicans in the state Senate for trying to introduce a version of the Arizona anti-immigration law into North Carolina:

"We shouldn't waste our time or efforts debating an unconstitutional law."

Republicans and their wedge issues!

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx waded happily in the muck of her own hypocrisy about Hispanic immigration on Tuesday at her tele-town hall, enough so that Keith Olbermann featured her last night on his "Worst Persons in the World" segment. Think Progress this a.m. offered even more detail on the encouragement Foxx gave the immigrant-haters.

Foxx and her husband built their nursery and landscaping business with immigrant labor. Would she like to open her books on whether they were all legal immigrants? Would she like to swear up and down that she hasn't benefited personally from the Federal government's lax enforcement?

Or would she just like to go on stirring up that vitriol while sitting on her fat fortune, made on the backs of laborers who would do pretty much anything for the chance to earn a living?